A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



ornament, others being plain and all of a blue or yellow colour. No 

 covers were found, and the sizes varied, some holding a quart others 

 twice or three times that quantity. Certain of them were very near the 

 surface, and many were found to contain burnt bones and ashes, some- 

 times with fragments of metal and glass, including a clasp-knife and 

 tweezers. In February, 171 1, thirty urns containing little but dust and 

 ashes were found by labourers, and on another occasion as many as 120 

 were recovered from a square rood of ground. Two urns from this 

 site were presented to the Royal Society and another to the Society of 

 Antiquaries by Peter le Neve, who communicated a quaint account of 

 the discovery to the Philosophical Transactions} The latter Society also 

 possesses two more from the same site found about 1750. In the larger 

 were found bones, a coin of Vespasian, and ' two pieces of brass such as 

 are sometimes fixed on pommels of saddles.' The smaller is of finer 

 material mixed with mica and glazed (or polished) on the surface : it 

 was carefully guarded by stones ranged about it, and contained bones, a 

 blade of a knife, a spearhead and iron buckle. The many cinerary urns 

 found at Elmham were usually deposited under heaps of stones, and 

 bedded in sand.^ From Elmham also is said to have come a remarkable 

 urn " now in the Mayer Collection at Liverpool, but the feature which 

 distinguishes it from its fellows adds but little to its evidential value. 

 It may however be considered from two points of view, and its claim 

 to have enclosed the cremated remains of a young Roman maiden has 

 already been discredited in the preceding article. Granted that Roach 

 Smith and Thomas Wright* may have been led to welcome the dis- 

 covery perhaps too readily, and to base upon it arguments that still await 

 demonstration, there can be no doubt that the urn is of the Anglo-Saxon 

 period, and unless archeology is totally at fault in East Anglia, once 

 contained the ashes of an Anglian inhabitant. In the Collectanea Antiqua^ 

 it is admitted to be strange that an inscription so clear and prominent 

 should have escaped the eye of an experienced collector like Rev. Bryan 

 Faussett, who makes no mention of it in his records, though the urn is 

 no doubt one of two from Elmham which contained calcined bones, one 

 those of an adult and the other to all appearance of a younger person. 

 In both were a pair of tweezers and small pieces of iron and copper 

 which seemed to be parts of brooches, and while one had also part of an 

 ivory comb the other contained some vitreous beads. Perhaps the safest 

 course is to ignore the lettering and class the urn with others, pre- 

 sumably from Elmham, drawings of which were exhibited to the 

 Archaeological Institute in 1853.* These had been found full of burnt 

 bones in what was evidently an Anglian cemetery, and being near the 

 surface had been broken at the top by the ploughshare. The ornament 

 consisted of impressed devices, vertical ribs and diagonal lines, and 



' Abridged by H. Jones, 1700—20, vol. v. part 2, p. 97. 



* Albert Way's Catalogue of Antiquities, p. 1 8. 



^ Jewitt, Grave-Mounds and their Contents, pp. 217-8, fig. 327. 



* Essays on Archeeolopcal Subjects, vol. i. p. 98. 



* Vol. V. p. 1 15. s Journal, vol. x. p. 161. 



332 



